‘They want to extend the Northern line, but I think this is Morden adequate.’
Tuesday June 2 2015
Gary Barlow once said: ‘Eight cheese-burgers with extra cheese, six large fries and three strawberry shakes, please,’ and if he was referring to how taxing being on tour is, he was spot-on.
I’ve nearly finished the first leg of my ‘Pun Gent’ tour. I’ve been travelling from town to town making people laugh, much like Ed Miliband did. In doing so, I’ve been in more sleazy hotels than a married footballer and have clocked up more miles than Eamonn Holmes’s pizza guy. I wouldn’t wish this lifestyle on my worst enemy. I’ve brought my wife along for company but, still, it’s a lonely existence on the road, with about as many laughs as there are found in the writers’ room on ‘Episodes’.
Hit the road I must, though, as this is how I make my living. Coffee enemas and pedicures don’t pay for themselves, after all.
Unlike Miliband’s manifesto, for me a successful career was never etched in stone. I could have followed my parents and become a plumber or a ballet teacher, but I was never handy with tools like my mother and I could never stand on my tippy-toes like my father. For some reason, I never became an accountant like my five, no, two brothers, and the thought of becoming a bulimia expert like my sister sickened me.
Too many speling mistakes ended my stent as a heart surgeon, so I turned to my first love… Cindy Bramhill, who told me that I should go away and become a comedian. So here I am.
As a man with haemorrhoids, driving around the UK hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be. Like a lazy pillow-maker, there have been some downsides. But, when I step onstage in the trousers I’ve made, it’s all seams worth it. It’s absolute euphoria. It’s like that wonderful sense of achievement you feel when you manage to quickly change the channel before Chris Evans says something. It’s a feeling that both myself and my three, no, one agent hope I never lose.
I’m performing in London next week and I’m really looking forward to those shows. Not only because I’m giving away new cars to everyone in the audience, but also because the therapist who is helping me with my habitual lying will be in the audience.